In The Holcroft Covenant, a thoroughly mediocre 1980s film version of a Robert Ludlum novel, there is an apt description of everyday concert programming. In this Michael Caine vehicle, the main characters attend a rehearsal at the Philharmonie, the home building of the Berlin Philharmonic. They are invited to the concert that evening by the conductor:

Russian propaganda poster commemorating the rebellion on the battleship Potemkinand the uprisings of the year 1905.

Like the people of Russia, the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich have suffered since their premieres. Composed at the peak of the composer's considerable powers, these pieces as grand public gestures, written to commemorate the start of the Russian Revolution (in the Eleventh) and its triumphant conclusion in the Twelfth. Each symphony is a programmatic work in four movements, requiring enormous orchestral forces and considerable lung power from the woodwinds and brass.

Monday, February 27, 2017

Maestro Shao-Chia Liu led the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra in Mendelssohn and Bruch.Photo from the Taiwan Philharmonic.

The vast distance between Scotland and Fukuoka, located on the southern island of Kyushu, Japan narrowed on Friday, February 17, when the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra offered an evening of works inspired by that faraway country. On the podium, Shao-Chia Lu, a guest conductor visiting from Taiwan where he is the music director of the Taiwan Philharmonic.

The Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra plays for peace.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
(A version of this article was originally published in Japanese translation by the Association of Japanese Symphony Orchestras, reused with permission)

The city of Hiroshima, located on the southern end of the big Japanese island of Honshu, remains best known for one date: Aug. 6, 1945. This was where the American bomber Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy," the first of only two atomic bombs ever used against human beings. Since that fatal day, Hiroshima has returned from its ashes as a symbol of international peace. The Peace Museum, the Cenotaph and the A-Bomb Dome (a building that survived the blast) speak volumes by simply standing and saying nothing.

The arrival of the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall is a cause for general celebration (if you have tickets) and a reason for people to swarm on the sidewalk seeking a single or a pair to hear this venerable orchestra and its unique sound. On Friday night, the Viennese gave the first of three weekend concerts under the baton of Austrian son Franz Welser-Möst.

The two symphonies that Beethoven wrote while convalescing at a spa in 1812 occupy a cherished place in the orchestral repertory. No. 7 and No. 8 have consecutive opus numbers, (No. 92 and 93, respectively) and represent a composer determined to grasp the idea of joy with both hands even when facing serious health problems and considerable personal hardship.

Paavo Järvi leads the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
(A version of this article was originally published in Japanese translation by the Association of Japanese Symphony Orchestras, reused with permission)

The Baltic Sea in the northeast corner of Europe is flanked by the countries of Estonia and Finland, some fair distance from Japan and its capital city of Tokyo. On Sunday, February 12, the Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi brought the sounds of the Baltic to NHK Hall in Shibuya, the bustling shopping district that is home to the NHK ((Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) Japan's broadcasting corporation.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

The 2017 Hearing Japanese Orchestras project provided the opportunity for four Western critics, (myself included) to encounter the sound of five very different ensembles in very different cities. It was also a culturally immersive experience, my first visit to Japan and an opportunity to hear familiar and unfamiliar music presented at a generally high level.

Monday, February 20, 2017

The bloody axe used to kill Agamemnon is a central plot point of Strauss' Elektra.

Richard Strauss chose to follow up the whirlwind success of Salome with Elektra, an opera that shares several points of similarity. Both works have a heroine who descends into insanity, horrific offstage murder (two this time) and take place in a single, intense act that lasts about an hour and a half. However, Elektra much more than Strauss repeating himself: it was a great leap forward.

When Richard Strauss unveiled Salome in 1905, he was already a leading light among German composers and conductors. He was born in Bavaria, and his father Franz was =the principal horn player at the first Bayreuth performances of Wagner's Ring.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Welcome to The Island of Morel with your guide: Stewart Copeland.Photoshop by the author, which is cheaper than flying to the Pacific with a famous musician but not as much fun.

Stewart Copeland rose to fame as the founder and drummer of the rock band The Police, who burst out of the British punk scene to top the charts in the 1980s. He has been a composer since The Police broke up, branching from soundtracks and TV scores to orchestral works and opera. His fifth and latest is is The Invention of Morel, a co-production between the Long Beach Opera and the Chicago Opera Theater. Morel bows at the Studebaker Theater on February 18.

Vittorio Grigolo has big shoes to fill (Jonas Kaufmann's) as the Met revives its Richard Eyre staging of Werther, the tale of a lovestruck poet whose tragic love for the beautiful Charlotte (Isabel Leonard) leads to suicide.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

The New York Philharmonic's three-week Tchaikovsky festival Beloved Friend hit an iceberg on Thursday, when a stomach flu felled curator and conductor Semyon Bychkov, whose idiosyncratic interpretations of this well-worn composer have breathed new life into the current season. His replacement was Joshua Gersen, the orchestra's assistant conductor, in his subscription debut.

The next Superconductor Audio Guide series will focus on Richard Strauss.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Richard Strauss stuffed the ballot box and will be the subject of the next Superconductor Audio Guide retrospective.
Photoshop and award design by Paul J. Pelkonen.

Superconductor has completed its first-ever reader's poll and the winner is....Richard Strauss!

The German composer is your choice to be the focus of the next series of Superconductor Audio Guides, the regular series that tracks the life of a great composer through a chronological output of operas and other pieces, and offers analysis of some of their major compositions. Last year the operas of Wagner and Mozart have been written up in this fashion, and this year it's Strauss' turn.

Richard Strauss represents the last bastion of German Romanticism. A masterful composer and conductor, he started as a creator of vivid, sometimes shocking tone poems that employed giant orchestras to create incredible effects. Today he is best remembered for the introduction to his tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, used to memorable effect by Stanley Kubrick in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Later in his career, Strauss moved to opera, creating a string of works that ranged from the shocking and violent to drawing-room comedies. He wrote fifteen operas in total. About half of them are in the standard repertory, with rare works popping up when an ambitious conductor and a cast of good German singers are able to revive one. Seven Strauss operas will be looked at in this coming series, with another three added if we're all having a reasonably good time. The plan is as follows:

Salome: Strauss' third opera and first genuine success, the story of the Princess of Judea and the death of John the Baptist

Capriccio: Strauss' last opera is a meditation on the nature of opera itself.

If you voted for Giuseppe Verdi or Giacomo Puccini, they will both be covered in future blog installments. As of this writing, the plan is for seven (or ten) Strauss operas, followed by the early operas of Verdi (Nabucco through La Traviata) the major works of Puccini Manon Lescaut to Turandot) and finally, the late operas of Verdi (Simon Boccanegra to Falstaff. Yes there are gaps in that list.) That's the plan as of this writing but things could of course change.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

The priestly Christoph Eschenbach.Photo by Margot Ingoldsby Schulman for the National Symphony Orchestra.

Carnegie Hall is one of the busiest venues in New York City, booking hundreds of concerts each calendar year through its in-house organization and also hosting a myriad of other performances who rent out the historic venue to play. One such concert was on Wednesday night, when the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra returned to New York under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

The music of Antonio Vivaldi was forgotten for centuries. When he was rediscovered in the 20th century, he rapidly emerged as one of the greatest composers of Renaissance Venice. The father of the multi-movement violin concerto, he was also a teacher of music, the creator of 94 operas and (at least) four oratorios. On Tuesday night, Carnegie Hall resounded with its first performance of his lone surviving oratorio, Juditha Triumphans.

The Metropolitan Opera has a new production of Rusalka, adding the Dvořák fairy-tale opera to the long list of repertory works receiving new productions under the stewardship of general manager Peter Gelb. This new production is the fourth by director Mary Zimmerman, whose past stagings have ranged from innovative (Lucia di Lammermoor) to unwatchable claptrap (Armida). The show is centered around Kristine Opolais, inheriting the swim fins of Renée Fleming in the title role: a mermaid whose love for a handsome prince leads her to become fully human.

Monday, February 6, 2017

The elegant and scholarly Jordi Savall and friend. Image by Molina Visuals.

A millennium is a long time, but not in the hands of Jordi Savall. Mr. Savall took the main stage of Carnegie Hall last Friday night, to lead the opening concert of the three week La Serenissima festival. This is a citywide celebration of the music, culture and rich history of Venice, Italy, curated by Mr. Savall, a musicologist, conductor and master of the viol, an 18th century instrument played between the knees.

Upon initial examination, there appears to be little imagination or initiative in devoting three weeks of the New York Philharmonic's season to the music of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. However, thanks to some innovative performance choices and imaginative programming, the current Beloved Friend festival under the curation and baton of conductor Semyon Bychkov is proving to be something of a watershed.

It's Groundhog Day...again, and this morning's entertainment was a rewatch of the 1993 Bill Murray comedy. If you've never seen it, Groundhog Day is the Harold Ramis film about a Pennsylvania weatherman who travels to sleepy Punxsatawney, PA only to find himself trapped in a (seemingly) infinite time loop where it is always February 2nd. In this essay, we will explore how Phil's plight mirrors the plot of Wagner's final (and most mysterious) opera, Parsifal.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

The Metropolitan Opera's economic model relies on a careful balance between modern operas (to remain relevant), rarities (to remain interesting) and tried-and-true war-horses like Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto. This month, the company revived its current Michael Mayer production, which moves the tale of a revenge-obsessed jester and a libertine Duke from Ye Olde Mantua to (of all places) Las Vegas, Nevada, roughly around the time that the Rat Pack held sway on the Strip.

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Critical Thinking in the Cheap Seats

Since 2007, Superconductor has grown from an occasional concert or CD review to a near-daily publication covering classical music, opera and the arts in and around NYC, with excursions to Boston, Philadelphia, and upstate NY. I am a freelance writer living and working in Brooklyn NY. And no, I'm not a conductor.